Trent President Bonnie Patterson has a number of responsibilities that necessarily take away the time she has available to be a full-time president. Patterson sits board of the Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC). The PRHC is a public institution that receives, and relies upon, taxpayer funding and yet it is exempt from Freedom of Information legislation (FOI), just like the Ontario universities. Patterson sits on the board of at least two publicly funded institutions that are exempt from FOI. Do we see a pattern here?

According the PRHC website;

Ms. Patterson, Trent University President and Vice-Chancellor, has been a member of the Peterborough Regional Health Centre Board of Directors since 1999... She is currently vice-chair of the Board and Chair of the Stewardship Committee... She also serves as a Board member for Datatel Scholars Foundation, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation and as a Trustee of Lakefield College School.

The PRHC was criticized for making decisions, in private, that had a direct effect on employees and service levels. One board member would not be party to this level of secrecy after stating so and left the meeting. It is also interesting to note that PRHC board member Richard Krug is a past member of the Trent University board (2001-2004).

The hospital's CEO says the board of directors had every right to discuss planned job cuts in private, even though a doctor left that meeting because he thought the matter should be talked about in public.

Paul Darby, president and CEO of the Peterborough Regional Hospital Centre, said personnel issues were being discussed at the meeting Wednesday which he said justified a closed-door meeting.

On Thursday, the board announced a plan to balance the books that includes eliminating at least 125 full-time positions, cutting services and closing 32 beds.

Darby said the board wanted to tell the hospital staff about the plan before any public announcements.

"If you were losing your job, would you want to read about it in the paper"? he said.

The hospital says who will lose their jobs has yet to be determined. No names were mentioned when the board discussed the job cuts, Darby said. But he insisted it didn't;t matter: they talked about jobs in such specific areas of the hospital that it would have been easy to surmise who was on the layoff list.

Board chairwoman Doris Brick said managers at the hospital told staff about the planned job cuts on Thursday. Later that day, there was a press conference announcing the plan.

Like Darby, Brick thought it was unfair to go public without first giving employees a heads-up.

Dr. Alan Thompson, a surgeon and member of the hospital board, had another point of view.

At the meeting, he argued the board of directors should not discuss the plan in private.

"I said because this was a public institution I was very unhappy with putting it in caucus and would not be party to that and left," Thompson said, earlier this week.

In addition to Darby and Brick the board of directors of the PRHC includes: Ross Garland, Greg Connolley, Natalie Garnett, Kevin James, Richard Krug, Michele Nicholes, Ron Osborne, Bonnie Patterson, Ken Powell, Peter Roach, Neil Rogers and Amy Terrill.

Besides Thompson, there are two other doctors who are directors: Dr. Srinu Kammila, and temporary chief-of-staff Dr. Don Harterre.